Here I am, sitting on the couch in my basement, watching Supernatural. Next thing I know my best friends name pops up on my phone, it's a text. "Huh that's odd, she normally calls." I say to my self, opening the message. It reads "Aiden, why am I here?" Instantly I freeze and my mind jumps back five years.
It's February 11,2012. I'm on a ski trip with my dad, having a blast. I've finally forgiven him for what happened last year, the divorce that is. Yeah he has more than one partner. So what, he's still my dad after all. Sorry off topic. Anyways he just went in to take a break-he has back problems and can't ski long-when I see his name pop up on my phone. It's a call so I answer, "Dad, what's going on?" I can hear him crying, and that never happens. "Just meet me in the lobby. We need to go home." Click he hung up. Giving me no choice but to oblige. I take the fastest slope back down to the lobby, starting to worry.
"Dad what's going on?" Is the first thing out of my mouth when I see him. "Your mom just called." He said through the tears, "Tom just killed him self. We are gonna go get Caity and Tristan then head to my place. Brendan already left to go to a friends house." I sat down, not sure I heard him right. I start to take off my ski boots, dazed, not paying attention to anything happening around me. "How'd he do it?" I ask looking for anything to make this information easier to handle. "I didn't ask." That's the answer I get? Really Dad you didn't fucking ask? What the hell, it's not like that's important at all. I was mad but couldn't let him see that. He was hurting enough, they were kind of close. So I sucked it up "Okay."
The walk out to the car was quiet. The ride home though, man was it loud- that's how my family is when we're upset, the music is blaring.
Two hours later we arrive at my moms house. Ambulance still out front, medics struggling to get his corpse out of the house and up the hill, it was icy. "Stay here. I'll go in and get Tristan and Caity." That's all he says. I just nod, unable to talk. Finally the three of them come out, it felt like forever in that car, Dad, Caity, and Tristan are all in tears. Mine are all dried up.
The rest of the night was quiet, almost painfully quiet. The only thing said was the occasional joke about how he never said he'd die until hell froze over, and well it was icy. I would've cried myself to sleep that night, if I had any tears to cry that is.
The next few weeks were rough. When we weren't crying we were fighting. My mom started drinking again, never too bad, well not by my standards. His wife, Sandi, got kicked out. We all blame her, even today we blame her. They had just gotten married and were happy for a while, until she started to become controlling. They met online and got married thirteen years after. He just wanted to get his citizenship, yes he was here illegally, no he wasn't Mexican- English in fact.
So I guess your wondering, like I was, well how'd he do it? How'd he kill him self? We went into his room to find an empty pill bottle and an 24-pack of beers gone. He had just gotten his sleeping pills refilled so it wasn't like he ran out. And yeah he had a drinking problem, we all knew that. But he never drank the whole pack in a day, yet alone a few hours.
My cousin, Tristan, took it hard. He wasn't Tom's child but might as well have been. He was living with us at the time, his mom asked us to take him in because him and his brother were always fighting and it got violent. Throwing hammers, shoving each other down the stairs, punching holes in walls. So we took him in. That was a few years before Tom killed himself. We were surprised when he got here, for all the stories we heard it didn't seem like he could do any of it. He was maybe 100 pounds, looked like a twig, four years older than me and couldn't even open a god damn barn door. But back to what I was talking about. He took it hard, and I mean really hard. He started cutting, talked about killing him self rather frequently. Diagnosed with depression, and then put on meds. He eventually stopped cutting so much, started parting, drinking, smoking weed. He wasn't a great kid, but I looked up to him anyways. That doesn't mean I've gone on to smoking or drinking. I saw what it did to him, he was locked up in juvie for a while, he's out now, a photographer I think. Has a college degree even. Married and happy, never thought he'd make it.
Needless to say we were surprised, and it did change us, all of us, my mom stopped drinking entirely, my brother ended up going to the in-patient program at the hospital, he was suicidal after the combined events of the last two years. And me, well I built walls, I didn't talk to anyone- not even my counselor. I didn't know how to cope, so I didn't, I just pushed it aside. And now, 5 years later it still weighs on me because of that.
In the end I learned a lot from this whole situation. It has taught me that drinking won't solve your issues. Cigarettes only take the edge off for a little. Cutting doesn't really help, just masks the pain temporarily. Weed, yeah sure he was doing better for a while, but in the end it will land you in jail, no matter how well you hide it. And after letting my family read this, I learned everyone remembers things differently.
